Father || Teen Wolf

04 - Anchor

Peter had many faults, but if there was one thing he was good at, it was reading people. He had used that skill to his advantage in the past, to get inside the head of whoever he wanted to trick, to play with their feelings and bring back memories they would rather forget. He couldn't remember the last time he had used that skill to do anything even remotely nice. As such, leaving the room as quietly as he could when he felt the teen in front of him needed to be left alone, had felt particularly odd.

The older wolf's exit had been discreet, so discreet that Jamie blinked and Peter was gone, and gone was his scent as well. It was as if he had never set foot inside the room, and it made the talk between the two Hales seem like a deeply perturbing dream. 

There was a bitter taste at the back of Jamie's throat, a sourness he couldn't get rid of no matter how many times he swallowed, and a weight around his chest. There was a darkness at the edge of his mind, a giant shadow stretching over his thoughts, spreading biting cold to everything it touched, and it touched everything. The uneasy feeling was hard to ignore, and for the first time Jamie was glad for all the noises and the mess outside. He could use the chaos of everyday life to drown his mind, and forget he had ever asked about the color of his eyes.

As if it wasn't enough, dread was building up in his chest as he kept stealing glances to the loud alarm clock near the door. His eyes alternated between staring at the clock and staring outside, where the night was falling and the clouds were hiding the moon, making for an even darker night. The only comfort he could find was in seeing that the moon wasn't full, with a narrow crescent still missing from the ominous sphere. He could almost feel the night air entering the room through the window, and it was freezing. 

Lydia was out there. 

She was outside with nothing but her bare skin to keep her warm, and Jamie knew it wasn't enough. She was injured, bitten by a werewolf like he had been, and there was no telling if she had turned. He tore his eyes away from the window and the clock and stared at his legs instead, two stupid pieces of flesh and bones incapable of carrying his weight when he needed it the most. He glared and clenched his jaw, the sound of his teeth gritting together deteriorating his mood even further, yet the distractions weren't enough to keep the images away.

Images of a girl with fiery hair, hair she pretended was not red and everyone played along, and everyone called her a strawberry-blonde instead. Images of the same girl, blushing for once as they had been talking back in the beginning, and he had blurted out something incredibly forward, and she had laughed, and she had agreed to the date. 

Then flashes, of how she bit her lower lip when she teased him, of how dimples appeared on her cheeks when she laughed, of how she rolled her eyes whenever the occasion pretended itself, how her eyebrows creased when she focused on something complicated, and how she would move, and speak, and do everything. 

He wanted her back. Knowing she was alone out there was unbearable, and he hated himself for not being out there as well, looking for her, calling her name, searching every inch of the city until she was back in his arms. The yearning for Lydia's presence grew even stronger, making his chest ache with her absence, encompassing everything, pushing Peter and his cursed blue eyes and his awful truths away from his mind. She mattered more.

It seemed Jamie's feelings didn't make a difference, in the end. What was inside his head simply remained there, and all the determination in the world didn't give him his strength back nor did it help find Lydia. He came face-to-face with the stone cold truth when his friends came back to the hospital, and he could smell defeat on them before he could see it written on their faces. 

Allison had joined the search, and she told him how the other Argent's had joined it as well, and Scott had the sheer joy of talking with Chris Argent while hanging upside down, his foot stuck in a trap Stiles has mindlessly triggered. Allison didn't need to explain that her family's intentions weren't simply to help the police find a lost teenage girl wandering the forrest. They weren't even looking for a girl but for a night creature, and they would strike first. Jamie didn't even want to think about what that could imply - Scott's shudder at the mention of the word "hemicorporectomy" had been enough to make him shudder as well.